Time Consumer
by Aku Blossom
Summary: A thousand years is a long time for anyone to wait, much more expecting someone else to wait it out for them. Still...here I am, still waiting.


A thousand years is a long time for anyone to wait, much more expecting someone else to wait it out for them. Still...here I am, still waiting. Seconds slip by, turn to minutes, melt into hours, which stretch on for days. Those days last weeks, until weeks turn to months, and months become years.

Somewhere along the line, years became centuries.

And here I am, still waiting steadfast.

A thousand years ago, there was a perfect, beautiful place I called home. A metropolis they named Townsville, a golden beacon of Western Civilization. It's been gone for a while now, buried beneath a hundred tons of wasteland and ruin. There are nights when I miss having the city around me, where I miss being called to action to defend its sanctity.

Those nights never last long.

Townsville is gone, and it's all my fault. I was no victim of circumstance. I chose this path, long before I even met you. Long before I found myself standing here, watching, waiting, dreaming.

No, a thousand years ago I chose this road. The road to perdition. The road to Hell.

Back then, I had two sisters. The Joy and the Laughter; the Toughest Fighter. They were my best friends, my closest confidantes. We adventured together, we grew together, we fought to defend our home from unimaginable evil.

They couldn't see my fault. They couldn't understand my defect. They couldn't bear my madness.

I betrayed them; I struck them down.

The pain was something I'd always lived with, it was like a faithful companion, deep within me every morning I woke, laying by me every night I survived. The pain was nothing new, it was something familiar, it was something safe. I could handle the pain.

The madness was something I never saw coming. One day my mind, my brilliant, perfect, flawless mind just...simply snapped. A screw came loose somewhere, a cog got caught. Maybe it was a product of the pain. Maybe it was our infernal connection, one forged in blood hundreds of years buried. I can't say for certain, I haven't the mind to say much at all anymore.

I can still cry; I do sometimes. When the loneliness becomes too much to bear, I cry and it relieves the pain. I never cried before; I blame the madness.

I can still scream; sometimes I have no choice. The empty sky, the barren wasteland surrounding me, they echo with my screams for hours. That I blame on the pain.

Mostly, though, I laugh. It hurts, more than anything else. You could say I enjoy that. The pain is something familiar, something safe. When the pain becomes too dull, I laugh and laugh until tears roll down my face. The laughter...that is mine. A product of the pain and the madness.

I treasure those moments above all others.

Has it already been a thousand years? I can only keep track of time on those rare occasions I surface from the madness. It, the madness, is like a black ocean filling my head. I spend most of my time submerged, laughing and waiting. I will keep waiting, until you arrive.

I know you're coming. You promised all those years ago you would return.

I can feel it...at the bottom of the madness.

You are here.

They never believed me, my sisters. I swore there was something evil coming. I tried to prepare them, I tried to make them stronger. They kicked and screamed, they begged and cried. In the end, they couldn't take the heat, it consumed them both. I wanted to prepare them for the evil, your evil. But they were just not strong enough.

They couldn't handle my madness.

They couldn't handle my evil.

They couldn't handle us.

Yes, I know you're close now. Closer than I ever imagined. Around me, the black sea begins to retreat, I catch my breath as I surface fully for the first time. No...not surfacing, learning to breathe again.

I look up, into your eyes. A grin slowly spreads across my face, seeing my own reflection in shards of broken glass. My pink eyes tainted by your own fiery red ones. Our expressions are one and the same: I can see that finally. All this time spent waiting, you've been here.

You were the pain I carried for so long.

You were the madness that infected my brain.

You were me all along.

You are Blossom.

And I am Aku.


End file.
